Quebecers are not very present in the official programs of the legendary Festival d’Avignon, but they are sometimes found where you least expect them. Like, this year, with the headlining presence of little Adeline Kerry Cruz in the French show Silent Legacy.
She is eight years old, with straight bangs and a radiant smile. And above all, she dances the krump, this urban dance from the Afro-American communities of Los Angeles, with “maturity” and with an astonishing “extra soul”. It is her mentor – and the one with whom she forms an unlikely duo – Jr Maddripp (also called West, or Kevin Gohou by his civil name), who says so.
“When I met Adeline and saw her dance, I was fascinated,” adds the man whom the Montreal krump community considers a master and whom Quebec viewers know, among other things, for his participation in the show. Revolution. “Children are often much more impressive than you think, but Adeline, who was already dancing the krump without even being taught it, also has qualities of interpretation that you don’t usually find in this segment of ‘age. Not even among teenagers. When I started, around the age of 15, I certainly didn’t dance with so much personality. She masters the technique, but she also has a unique presence, she adds her own colors and a lot of emotion. »
In the beginning was a movie
Choreographer Maud Le Pladec nods. She discovered the girl on Instagram, randomly browsing, in the short film SitStill, by Vincent Rene-Lortie. The shock was immense. To the point of immediately contacting Adeline’s parents (circus artists from the Les 7 Fingers company) and imagining a show starring her with Audrey Merilus, a contemporary dancer from a completely different universe and trained at the famous Brussels school of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker.
A few Instagram messages later, the work begins in Montreal, then in Orleans. From Kevin to Adeline then Audrey, the creation questions the notion of heritage and transmission, crossing practices, genres and stories. Far from the timed and competitive territory of typical krump combat, something new is slowly being built. The sauce takes.
And bam, here are all these beautiful people at the Festival d’Avignon on the stage of the Célestins cloister.
“How to explain this quality of interpretation in such a small girl? asks Maud Le Pladec. It is a mystery, there is no answer to this question other than mystical answers. At eight years old, she is already a full and complete artist. »
Little Adeline does not flinch at this avalanche of compliments. “I dance the krump because I like the emotions of this dance,” she tells us, cutting short too much outpouring. “Dancing allows me to tell things. With each little choreography, I create little stories in my head. And the krump, an often jerky and robotic dance, very expressive, is the perfect territory for this narrative superposition, we understand.
A legacy to honor
Silent Legacy, “it’s a show that offers an encounter between krump and contemporary dance. But be careful, there is no real fusion”, specifies Jr Maddripp, who co-signed part of the choreography.
Krump has its codes, its history, its heritage, and it’s sacred! “We try to tell where krump comes from and never camouflage the popular and urban textures that shaped it. Do not grind or deconstruct too much; we want to sublimate the krump on a theater stage in Avignon in all its fullness, in the complexity of its own codes. Except that the encounter with contemporary language and with Audrey’s journey is natural — because there have always been traces of classical ballet in krump, for example. »
Maud Le Pladec, indeed anxious to respect the traditions of a discipline in which she is inviting herself for the first time, will add that, “however, Silent Legacy provokes a displacement and defies norms with long choreographic sequences that break the typical rhythm of krump, which is always practiced in very short sequences in the form of battles “.
It is also a play about sisterhood and the place of women, which flirts with the “sociology of gender” and which, imbued with a strong performativity, “also calls into question the codes of sports culture”. All in a sensitive and intimate way, she says.
Quebec discreetly represented in Avignon